


I Was Praying That You and Me Might End Up Together

by blak_cat



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 13:45:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3531455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blak_cat/pseuds/blak_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two different perspectives on the thin line between love and hate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Please Don't Say You Love Me

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to do an in-universe piece because there's hella amounts of AU right now on the tag.

_Oh the deer and the wolf, we really want to get along, we're in this together, you're the only one…_  
-The Deer and the Wolf, Sophie Ellis-Bextor

\--

Okay, so she might be attractive, but she's human garbage. And awful people really shouldn't be allowed to be pretty (insanely, supermodel level pretty, especially). You think it's probably some crazy only child syndrome. She probably comes from some old money family and is used to having her run of everything. Because no one could be this malicious on purpose. She has to be ignorant somehow.

Cue a few weeks later…

"Oh no, Betty's missing! Oh no, Carmilla's mean! Am I close?"

Okay, so you were clearly giving her too much credit and now you just want to strangle her. You think she actually might be Satan. Like actual Lucifer in leather pants.

"What's Styria's laws on homicide?" you say, dropping onto Perry's bed after being effectively sexiled from the room (again).

"Laura, you need to try and get along with her and stomach it. Everyone has these roommate issues the first time," Perry says.

It's because of these thoughts of poisoning her and stabbing her with a pen that you think, maybe just for a hot second, that you're jumping to too many conclusions when you start to actually think she might be something other than human. But that goes away very fast when you start Googling the ways to kill a vampire and then go out to buy a string of garlic.

\----

You find it interesting, the ways in which she's disguised herself. You take feverish notes on it and study them. She eats food (your food), she drinks alcohol (and gets ridiculously drunk, like, a lot), and smokes to give off the impression of being human. She's like a spy in deep cover.

Of course not a spy smart enough to glance up every once in a while and notice a green light on the webcam.

But there are other small things you notice, too. Not at first because you're too busy trying to comprehend that she actually just used pyrokinesis in the middle of your dorm, holy crap. But, eventually, after, like, your third go at watching the videos you start to pay attention to the boring parts. The parts where she's actually asleep.

The parts where she's doing something weird like breathing.

The other day it was the coldest morning of the early fall season and both you and Carmilla left the dorm at the same time because a fire alarm sent the building into the courtyard. And your breath was frosted and visible in the morning light but every time you looked over no form of ghost was escaping Carmilla's mouth, even as she talked with her most recent "study buddy."

"She may very well be training for a scuba certification test," Perry says and you groan because _come on_

But in this video, one of the few that actually caught her sleeping before the sun came up, her stomach is moving rhythmically.

You let yourself get paranoid that maybe she's playing some weird long con and actually watches all your videos and is completely screwing with you. But that's too much work for her. You know that much about her.

In her sleep she breaths.

\----

You will never admit that you were marginally turned on. Like, maybe like a teeny tiny bit. Come on, she was a hot girl in a corset and she was touching you and you can't control your biology. Honestly, mean, vindictive, murders should not be allowed to have great faces and bodies that look Photoshopped.

It wears off quick though.

Mostly.

\----

The first time you feel a twinge of guilt is on day 9 of her captivity in the dorm room. She doesn't look good. She's gone pale and quiet and she drifts off to sleep constantly. And you want really, really bad to give her the mug of blood. In fact, more than once you shove it under her face and practically gift wrap it to her but she turns her head away because even if you do give her the first one for free, she knows you'll eventually force her to talk.

You see the seizure though and your mind goes back to the breathing thing. And there's another thing, when you're not looking her body gives up.

And then you practically shove the blood down her throat because this is so not how you wanted this to go and guilt turns to panic and you forget everything for thirty seconds because all you could think about is her dying and it being your fault.

"Please don't die!" you tell her and you'll come to find out you used that line a little prematurely (it would become a lot more poignant later).

And she's angry, maybe that her body betrayed her. Just like a human might be.

And then you're begging for her story and you play it up, everything's fun again because Carmilla's not dead (well, at least not in that way). And she's being snarky so that means she's back to normal. But then it stops being fun fast because holy crap Carmilla is suddenly very, very _real._ And it's the first time you think you may be in over your head, that this all might have gone too far.

Because Carmilla loved someone. Your awful roommate who steals your things and trashes the room and just admitted to a life of murder and deceit and betrayal…loved someone. Stills does, actually, it looks like.

You think about how _Buffy_ colored all the ways you've been approaching this, thinking she's soulless and without conscious and pretending to be a person to gain your trust.

But now you're remembering that she was human once. And according to her story, she didn't leave that behind by choice. Maybe she wanted it back?

Because she's crying for a girl.

A girl who probably noticed that Carmilla breaths when she sleeps a lot sooner than you did.

\----

The first time you actually, genuinely laugh at one of her jokes, you don't realize it's already too late.

"What's that? Oh, and you'll use my head as a doorstop if I keep asking questions?"

It's macabre but, like, you can totally see that playing out.

She's rolling her eyes at LaFontaine and shaking her head and you try to stop the giggle but you fail because you didn't realize how funny she was. It was self-deprecating perhaps, but it just seemed so, normal. She got into fights with her mom (world altering, deadly fights) and told the story just like anyone might.

You didn't hear the dismantling of your walls over the sound of your giggle and the sly smile on her face.

\----

Carmilla likes that windowsill. She stares and stares until you sleep and probably continues long after. You want to talk to her about it because you're actually, sort of, kind of friends now and she's fascinating you in a way that you don't want to write down.

"How many constellations do you know?" you say from your bed. She doesn't even turn.

"All of them. In many languages," she says quietly in that specific brand of low voice that you don't want to admit is, like, ridiculously attractive.

"Maybe you could teach them to me sometime," you say absently and you think you can actually hear her smirk.

"Maybe."

You get up and decide if you're going to be awake, it might as well be productive. Your feet pad on the chilly hardwood and you sit at your computer, for once, to actually work. You flip open your copy of Paradise Lost and hunt for underlined passages hoping that Past Laura was kind enough to properly annotate so Present Laura didn't have to work too hard at 2am.

 _"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven"_.

For some reason you look at Carmilla.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" you say and immediately regret it.

"Anything for you, cupcake," she drawls and turns to look. The light she's playing with suddenly still and the flame shines in her eyes not unlike a cat and you think of Bagheera.

"Never mind, actually, it was dumb."

"Oh come on now, we were almost having a moment."

You're not sure what connotation she's going for there because you're never totally sure if she's flirting with you or if she just flirts with everyone. You're leaning to the latter. Then you think of Ell and your stomach twinges because you think of all the ways Carmilla didn't flirt with her.

It's not jealousy.

Carmilla's back to being more interested in the canopy of dark outside, and you wonder if she's made her own constellations in her boredom. Perhaps she's even connected the stars into words and painted a novel across the sky.

Instead, you decide to flip off the light and clap the laptop closed. You're not in the mood for nightmares about fallen angels and there's something oddly comforting about Carmilla sitting at the window.

It dawns on you just before you fall asleep that Carmilla might actually be sitting at that window for the very reason you find it comforting. But you're too tired to wake up and thank her.

\----

Okay, one time is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is purposeful. She's protecting you. She punched her brother to free you. She threw you out of the way of a falling mushroom, and put herself now between you and your would-be death by book. She's trying to keep you alive. She's making an active effort to keep you around.

And sometimes she makes you cocoa or brings you a cookie.

You think you actually might like that even more. Which is saying something because, you know, being ialive/i.

"My dad's going to want to buy you five dinners for saving me," you say.

"Tell him I prefer type O," she says and you giggle again.

"You might have to settle for Olive Garden," you say.

"Only if I get to buy you dinner afterwards."

She winks and goes back to reading the book, leaving you with flaring red cheeks and a pulse in double time. You might like that, actually. You're kind of really curious recently about doing things with her that aren't roommate-y or related to trying not to die. Normal things. Like dinner or movies or walking around and talking or—

You've just described dates.

Three of them, in fact.

Crap.

\----

After Carmilla emerges from the bathroom, after you've changed into pajamas ( _after the waltzing_ ), she moves to grab a book from her collection behind your head and her perfume is like a drug. Maybe it's a vampire thing, they're supposed to be alluring, from what you can tell. Typical evolutionary tactic, found in plants and dangerous amazon frogs and such.

But she's one step above alluring or attractive. She's beautiful. And most beautiful, you've found, when you're eyes are closed. The perfume makes you think of her smile. That can't be part of the patented vampire cat nip. Nope, that's just you. Having crushes in places you shouldn't.

"What book are you reading tonight?" you ask while her hand is still hovering over the shelf and she pauses.

"You tell me," she says with wink and closes her eyes. She moves her hand slowly across the shelf. "Tell me when."

Instead of saying it though, your impulse is to rest your palm over her hand when you decide you can't look at her face any longer without doing something incredibly stupid and she smirks when she feels it. Her fingers brush the spine of a book and she pulls it out.

Her eyes flutter open.

You swear you can feel the breeze from it.

" _Frankenstein_ ," she says.

"Is that one okay? Because we can totally play again if it's not," you sputter out quickly and she laughs.

"It's perfect, Laura."

You're doing backflips inside because she's staring at you and she said your name and it's how you know she's currently considering you as the only living thing on the planet.

"Cool," you say.

"The Monster and I have bonded before," she says, sitting up and moving away, taking her perfume with her.

"Bonded?"

"'I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.'"

And your smile is gone and your mouth is hanging open but Carmilla pretends she didn't say anything at all and just lays on the floor, book to face, reading in the dark.

You think to the discussion board post you wrote at the beginning of the year on _Frankenstein_ that was now servicing your term paper on _Paradise Lost. The Monster represents a reversal in nature, where he should be to Frankenstein and the world as Adam was to God in the Book of Genesis, he is instead a distortion, perversion, and misuse of the divine spark, the definition of the original root word of monster_.

You think about Carmilla walking around despite being over 300 years dead. You think about how she constantly trades deaths for her continued life. You think about all the ways the two of you were never supposed to meet because you're centuries apart. You think of that time LaFontaine was determined to figure out a scientific reason for things like staking and immolation working on vampires while shotguns to the face did not. You think of how they swore that everything in the world followed mathematical and physical rules. You thought of how Carmilla said she was not obligated to the laws of physics or nature and stormed out.

Monster. From the Latin word monstrum, meaning "unnatural event" or "malfunction of nature."

You think about Ell. And suddenly you're furious. Your energy, instead, is used to try and go to sleep because Carmilla will know if you don't.

\----

Dreaming of Ell is a whole new experience now. You want to ask her so many questions, you want to slap her, you want to have everything she had and was careless with.

"The light is hungry," she says.

"You gotta give me more than that," you say.

But you're awake again when someone's hand is on your shoulder and you hear your name. She only calls you by your name in times like this.

"I'm okay," you assure. "This is just how I make sure you actually do know my name."

She snorts and sits on the edge of your bed. And you know she wants to ask you about Ell and you think you might actually throw up if she asks you to give her a message because it's all so high school. But of course you would do that, of course you would totally get caught up in a teen romance in the middle of a possible world-ending catastrophe.

"Not sure if I want to go back to sleep though," you groan as you look at the clock and realize just how close to sunrise it is.

"No, I imagine not."

You like her like this. You love giggling at her jokes (even if they're usually at the expense of others) and you love seeing her smirk and you even love watching everyone else get frustrated with her. But you love this more because it's just for you.

She stands up and offers a hand.

"Are we waltzing again?" you ask and you think it might actually be the closest you've come to actually flirting with her. If she notices she doesn't say a word.

"No."

And you take her hand. A month and half ago you would have called for help, let Danny tackle Carmilla into whatever desk corner it took to subdue her. But right now all you can think about is how many butterflies release in your stomach when she puts a jacket over your shoulders for you while you're slipping on shoes.

She puts a jacket on too. And it doesn't even phase you now. She sometimes wears pajamas when she sleeps too.

She nods her head to the door and you follow her and outside it's chilly, very chilly. In fact you zip up the jacket she gave you and you think you almost see a twitch in her arm like she's going to put it around you and you desperately want her to but she just tucks her hands into her pockets.

"Are you kidnapping me?" you ask because the thought kind of did cross your mind for, like, a hot second.

"Revenge for you kidnapping me first," she says.

"It's not kidnapping if it's in your own room and you don't leave it."

"My mistake."

And you're giggling again and it's like the best of both worlds of things you love about her. And you try to not freak out because that's like the fifth time you've used that word in your head you really need to stop because if you start to think about how this might be more than a crush or infatuation you'll definitely embarrass yourself.

You follow her through the dark and you think she might be able to see in the dark because she's bobbing and weaving even after you've left the security of the streetlamps on the sidewalk. You're walking in wet grass and you pull up your pajama pants a bit.

She leads you to a large brick building you don't really recognize. She leads you around the side and opens a discrete metal door that looked like it might have been padlocked at one point before someone, very obviously, ripped the padlock off. You eye Carmilla but don't say a word.

It's even darker in the old hallways and she takes your hand without saying a thing and it feels like static and you think about when your torsos were pressed together a day ago when you were dancing in the room.

She totally has to be able to see in the dark because she is adept at walking and turning and opening doors and walking upstairs, even when you're tripping, even after your eyes adjust and you still don't have a good line of sight.

"This is like, 5 flights so far," you groan. "Isn't there an elevator?"

"I don't do elevators."

She stops when she hears you stop and she turns to look at you and you look back. You wonder if she's imagining darkness and tight air and earth.

"I'm sorry," you say, because you get it immediately and try not to look to embarrassed.

She shrugs and motions for you to follow when she turns and continues.

But then suddenly there's cool air and the sky is open above you because you're on the roof of the building. You are fairly high up and the campus is sprawled out below you and you think of iThe Lion King/i and want to make a joke about the shadow lands but Carmilla is already halfway across the roof and sitting on the edge of the building, legs dangling over.

"That's not safe," you say, a little worried, as you walk over to her but avoid the edge. She snorts.

"Nine stories is definitely not enough, kiddo," she says, leaning back on her palms. "Trust me."

You shiver at that because you understand the implication and then you have this urge to cry.

"How many times?" you say before you can stop yourself and holy crapballs that actually just came out of your mouth.

She doesn't look shocked though, no flinching or anything. She just sighs and you feel like the worst person on Earth.

"Seven times," she says. "Once shortly after I popped up out of my own grave. Twice in the coffin. Three more times afterwards."

"That's six."

"And once when I was tied to a chair, hoping I'd starve to death."

You want to pass out immediately. You want to hug her but you think it might actually burn. You don't know how to respond to that, or blink, or breath. A lot of boulders just fell on top of you, they're breaking all your insides and you can't breath and you're aware the sun is coming up but it feels totally and completely dark.

She senses it, whether she heard your heart rate pick up or had social skills enough to register how fucked up everything just got. She turns to you.

"I'm sorry," you blurt out and reach out to touch despite how you can feel your heart hammering in your tonsils.

"You apologize too much," she says.

"Because I really, _really_ am sorry. Like, more than I've ever been, I think," you say.

"It's over now," she says.

You read somewhere once that seven was the number of competition. You think maybe that means she won't try again.

"Besides cupcake, it's sunrise."

And so it was.

\----

Honestly, this shouldn't be so surprising. You knew what she was, knew what she'd done. But somehow who she felt so different from all those things that you hoped it was all over. But you watch the video three times because you can't believe what you're seeing.

Someone else is in your body, moving your legs, using your voice, touching Carmilla with your hands. It's disturbing and you cringe the whole time. And you want to cry, and you want to slap Carmilla, and you really want to just deck the dean. You're not sure which urge is going to win and you're trying not to blow to bits.

And the problem is, part of you feels sorry for her. Watching Carmilla stiffen and cringe in the presence of her mother, watching her forced to kiss the dean's boots and play puppet all over again.

But no.

She had a choice.

And she didn't have a choice. You know this, you really do. But you don't know what to feel or which way is up or down because what a curveball it is when you're love interest in the drama is, in fact, the villain.

"Go, run and hide. We're done."

And there you go again breaking up with someone you were never even dating. This went too far. _You_ went too far. And so did she. You were both admitting it now, admitting that yours was a relationship that required formal breaking. You were linked and now you had to fracture it, sever it, burn it. Whatever it took to get her away from you because if she gained one inch, you'd forgive her.

And it helps that she doesn't even pretend to be sorry. That definitely helps your growing desire to never look at her face ever again.

But then again you want to look at her face. Because, you think you just might…

No. You aren't going to say it, not even in your head.

Carmilla is gone.

\----

It's a mess but Carmilla is like the hub of this wheel of crazy so you cling to her and she keeps you firmly behind her. Everything is gone when you smell her perfume. It's masked by salt and what clearly is the ocean and maybe a little bit like the woods. But it's still cemented to her and it's enough for you to forget everything and grab onto her shoulders tightly.

Carmilla is solid and firmly between you and her mother.

"300 years Mircalla and you're still a child," her mother is saying. "You have no concept of what you've done."

"I'm a slow learner."

It sounds like she's got a cocky smirk and you try not to smile because she's quick with the lines, even when you've all got -.0005 seconds to do anything besides run.

The sword seems to hum as Carmilla raises it. You watch her hand and you see it's shaking and you remember the video and what her mother said and suddenly want to slap it out of her hand because it's hurting her and it's going to kill her but she's already made up her mind.

You're on the ground because she pushed you out of the way while she jumped forward and her mother met her in the middle. There were throwing each other in and out of black smoke as the effortlessly changed from animals to people and back again, chasing each other.

Her mother was fighting to subdue a cancerous growth.

Carmilla was fighting to cut it out.

Even if it was attached to something vital.

Even if it killed her.

Carmilla was fighting to be free.

Everyone around you is doing something, fighting someone, and all you can do is watch her. You feel someone pull you up and back but you struggle at their arms because you need to be nearby in case Carmilla needs your help. What if she needs your help? What if she falls? What if she needs you to protect her?

She's never needed that though, or perhaps she did and you never noticed because you were too busy focusing on the butterflies in your stomach. You'll deal with that later, you'll apologize, and you'll forgive her. And you'll probably kiss her. But you need to make sure you get the chance to.

And Carmilla wins. She delivers what think must be the world's most satisfying punch and there might be trumpets because it looked so much like an action movie and you kind of wish you got it on camera.

"Carm!" you run toward her but she puts out an arm to keep you back from the edge. She looks scared to look at you.

"Are you alright?" she asks, very matter-of-factly. She's looking you over.

"I'm fine, Carm…I—we…" You really want to tell her that you forgive her, you want to be able to hug her and smile because she looks so much lighter, the chains you never bothered to notice have finally fallen from her wrists. For the first time in 300 years, she was not a slave.

"Later," she says. And there's something in her tone…

"Also can we discuss the big black cat thing? Because that explains _a lot_."

She's not smiling. She turns to towards the glowing pit and your heart drops into your stomach and they both plummet because, personal victories aside, you're already too late. And it looks pissed.

You watch the figures in the light try and crawl their way out. They're reaching and crying and screaming and you don't know if it's a trick to draw you in or if they're really there and really crying. And you see the girl you recognize as Ell and her arm is outstretched and her fingers are reaching and it's all for Carmilla. And you don't have time to feel jealous when you see her tears.

Maybe the chains weren't completely gone after all because you think maybe guilt and regret are just different types of masters.

You can't bring yourself to go up to her though, as much as you want to comfort her, to remind her that it's okay, to help her let go. But this is a world you don't belong to. It's a moment for them alone, and perhaps one Carmilla waited for. You won't ruin it.

She heaves out a sigh and her shoulders slump and she looks like maybe she's lived too long.

"You know, I am really starting to hate this heroic vampire crap."

But then she's gone.

And there's about three pairs of hands on you holding you back because you didn't even realize you'd started running after her and that voice echoing around the caves must be yours because it sounds like pain and scabs and bruises and it just keeps shouting her name.

"Laura, stop!" Danny says behind you, giving you a good yank and suddenly you're on our back and she's got her knee digging into you to keep you still. "Laura!"

The only thing that calms you down is your own tears because you notice they're coming out of your eyes and you think this can't be happening because the tears mean it's real. But you can feel them, hot and sticky, and you free one of your hands to violently wipe them away but more just follow.

Someone pulls you up and you're on your feet and you're numb. Very numb. Incredibly numb. How could there be degrees of numb? How could there be adjectives to describe you feeling nothing at all? But there are and you use them because if you don't think about something, anything, everything, then you're going to think about her and you're going to be seeing her face and it's gone now from the world now.

You just sacrificed your queen.

\----

You wake up the morning after and have a panic attack.

You're in that blissful place between sleep and awake where you're slowing cataloguing your life and remembering where you are and why and suddenly you see the empty bed and you can't breathe. You feel a drum against your chest and you think wherever Carmilla is she must be able to hear it.

You're hyperventilating.

You're panicking.

You're dying.

Like she was dying.

Like she died.

"Laura it's okay," says a soft voice.

Perry comes out of nowhere. In the background there were grumbling noises of others waking and you remember how much Perry insisted they stay the night and it was probably because she thought this right here might happen. Her hands are warm and all you want is to feel cold ones. Her voice is soft and you want something rough. She offers you food or tea and you want to eat nails.

"You're okay," she says. "You're in your room and you're safe, we're all safe, remember?"

"I do," you say and she gets your meaning immediately because she frowns and hugs you and you hug her back tightly and pretend her body isn't warm.

\----

"You know."

You've never hated yourself more.

\----

You find the copy of _Wuthering Heights_ she was reading off and on. You open it up to the bookmarked page.

_"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn a mighty stranger"_

You don't cry. But your heart doesn't know that.

\----

"Laura, she knew it was a one way trip. It's not your fault," Danny says.

You don't want to hear it and you don't have it in you to argue with her. So you just stay quiet and hope she'll leave. She's ten types of stubborn though (not even close to the way Carmilla was).

\----

You hope she became a star.

You shook and cried at all the stories and movies and books that told you vampires were soulless and therefore, lacking in a place in an afterlife. You cried when you thought of being denied her, even then, years from now, when you finally go.

You're at your window and the moon is accusing you but the stars are defending you. They're blinking in their steadfast watch.

"We could get a star named after her," LaFontaine says from your desk chair. Everyone's taken to keeping shifts of watching you, sitting with you, existing with you.

"No," you sigh back. "She's all of them."

She was scattered across the sky and you can feel her even now. She's almost whispering in your ear and right from the sky _sleep cupcake_ …

You lay down in your bed and LaFontaine stays, though you want to tell them you're okay right now. The stars are watching over you tonight because they forever bear her name.

\----

On day four Perry takes you to the student health center because you've repeated the panic attack incident and she's scared for you and Betty tries but she's really no help. You haven't been eating either, except for the times when Perry brings you soup and the liquid diet once a day is starting to make you exhausted but you refuse to sleep.

"Survivor's guilt is common," the doctor says. "It's common to feel like you survived in the place of another who did not."

"That's not it," you say.

"Laura, just try to relax and listen to her," Perry says.

The doctor sighs and sends Perry away because she wants to talk to you privately for a minute. She leans back and crosses her legs and you think her sudden casual posture is the doctor version of good cop/bad cop.

"Laura, you're only going to be able to help yourself if you try to work through your grief," the doctor says. "The biggest step is admitting what you've lost."

You feel tears and your face is getting hot. It's the first time since that night you've gotten this close to crying. Usually you run into the bathroom and jump in the shower so you can't tell the difference between water and tears and suddenly it's like you never cried at all. But there's nowhere to run here and the doctor knows. She's going to make sure you don't run and it doesn't feel like being trapped.

And suddenly you're hugging the doctor and it's super embarrassing but you don't care because you are _balling._ You haven't cried this hard since you broke your wrist riding your first bike. It's a different type of short breath, and it hurts so much less than the panic attacks.

"It's okay, Laura," the doctor says with a pat to the back.

You're pouring. And it feels so good.

"She died thinking I hated her," you whisper, pulling back and wiping your ears violently. The doctor doesn't know you and doesn't know her and probably wants to put you in a strait jacket but she's kind.

"I don't have words to make that feel better or go away, Laura," the doctor said. "The fascinating thing I've found in helping people through their stages of grief is the paradox of loving anything at all. Loss is the gamble of love. Does the happiness outweigh the pain? That was for her to decide. And that's for you to decide. But before you do that, you need to eat. I'm writing you out a meal plan and your Floor Don will make sure you stick to it."

And you do.

You think about being on that roof with her.

_Besides cupcake, it's sunrise._

\----

Happiness could never feel like this because it's something else entirely. It's completion, it's locking in and never letting going. Happiness can never compete. This is what a flower feels like the second it pops open in a bloom, this is a leaf at its greenest.

"Are you hurt? It's looks like you're hurt," you say when time finally catches up with you.

She looks, for the most part, okay. Certainly she looks exhausted and there's healing bruises and cuts and paces where you think bones must have been bent the wrong direction but she's perfect and brown eyes have never been more important to you.

"And, I'm sorry that I hugged you so much that you're hurt, it's just that you were dead and now you're not."

She's everywhere, quite suddenly. Even when you were holding each other and dancing, you weren't this close, not in this way. There's magnets this time, or gravity. There's a million little red strings jumping out of your skin and latching onto hers and pulling you closer.

"And I know you must be going through a lot of stuff with your mom…"

She's not listening to you (when does she ever, honestly). She's mapping your face. The flick of her eyes to your running mouth that really, really needed to shut up, might have been a brief moment of asking permission but it seemed Carmilla grew disinterested in that quickly.

Her hands hold you in place and lips hit lips and your hands snap to her arms because you need something to steady yourself. Five minutes ago she was lost forever and now she was kissing you. And everything in you is stiff except for your lips and, embarrassingly, your tongue.

She pulls away first and her eyes open in time with yours and she looks 18. She's too scared to try again, so you do that annoying thing you do where you start talking.

"And I know you didn't do it all for me…"

_Oh my god, shut up!_

Carmilla has like ideas. She's smiling and the possibility of rejection is gone so she kisses you again and you're talking too much and smiling too much to really kiss her back so you chase her lips and she pulls back again because it seems like she really just wants to look at you.

You're having none of it though and somewhere between the nuclear bomb going off behind your chest, the heating up of your face, and the fireworks in your brain, you jump forward and have the audacity to cup her jaw and she rocks back because it surprised her, apparently. But she catches herself and lets your lips have their way with her for a few more seconds before you decide you really want to look at her too.

"Wow."

It's not enough but she seems to understand because she's looking at you softly and one of her hands is brushing through your hair absently. And then that talking thing happens again because you cannot handle tension and are, apparently, fourteen years old.

"So, you're a giant black cat, huh?"

She's laughing and it's all you've ever wanted.


	2. Cuz I Might Not Say It Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on song credits at the bottom. Thanks for reading. I'd like to do more in-universe pieces so if anyone has requests/prompts please send them to me :D

_This is your heart, can you feel it? Can you feel it? Pumped through your veins, can you feel it? Can you feel it? This is your racing heart…_  
-Laura Palmer, Bastille

\--

Personally, you think it's pretty stupid going after two girls in one dorm room. Mother says it's economical. Apparently both fit the lovely little virginal asterisk in the instruction book, and both seem to have an apparent lack of friends to go around asking questions. That's pathetic. But you're mostly annoyed that you've been dumped with double duty. You were already assigned the bleach blonde (Ellen? Elise? You try to never call her by name to her face), and now you were the live-in kidnapper for another.

She's adorable though and you can't help but laugh a little bit.

"They're in my half-room, cutie, and possession is nine tenths."

Her face bunches up like a tiny little accordion and there's no way you're not going to put up a fight when it comes to this one because she's literally a kitten and at this point it's just cruel.

After she goes to bed in multiple angry huffs you rummage through her things. Her ID pops out of her backpack when you loosen a zipper and you pick it up.

Laura Hollis.

Her picture screams school photo day and her dirty blonde hair is pulled back into a loose ponytail. She looks a little exhausted and you wonder who thought it would be a good idea to take ID pictures in the middle of move-in. Still, you have to admit she's attractive. 

You go through some notebooks. She's an English major, concentration in journalism you guess from the notebook labeled "Intro to Journalism." Oh look at that, she has the same anthro class as Eliza (Emilia?). Good, they can cross paths and between the two of them and the already taken roommate it's one giant sacrifice inception.

She makes a noise in her sleep and you look over on instinct.

She scrunches her face in her sleep too.

\----

Your plan to get her to hate you enough to leave the school really is a win for everyone involved. She gets to be spared death and you get to lounge around and do whatever the hell you want because somehow that really, _really_ pisses her off. Not to mention she has one or two shirts that you've claimed as your own and a never ending supply of cookies. It really is a great deal.

Until you get this tiny little spark of sympathy.

But only because she got one first.

"Even you deserve better."

She doesn't know anything, not about any of it, nothing about your past or your murder or your mother or Ell. But it feels like she might.

_Even you deserve better._

_Even you deserve better._

_Even you deserve better._

Well fuck.

\----

So now you're going beyond your passive methods to get her out of harm's way and actually making an effort. You're actually getting up, getting out of the room, and hauling your butt to the seedy apothecary in the college town. He makes some comment about getting silver bullets and shooting the next "oupyr" that walks into his shop but he sells you the charm and you flip him off on the way out.

The walk back finds you incredibly itchy all over and like you're going to throw up and she better appreciate your effort because you hate these fucking things and this is the boldest step you've taken in helping girls from your mother's grip and if she's spotted with it, it'll be about .5 seconds until mother figures it out.

"Your Snape/Ron fic is still on the screen, spaz," you say.

She was talking about you because you could hear her down the hallway, but you don't really care. She can hate you as much as she wants as long as mother stays shy one girl and the world gets to keep its journalist puppy because, as much as you hate to admit it, the world is a little brighter with this girl in it.

Only a little.

She's still an annoying child.

And after you make your mysterious exit from the room, charm securely attached to her tiny wrist, you make your way to your philosophy of tyranny lecture because you still do like learning.

"Our ideas of tyranny, of government, and of control, date back to the works of Plato and Aristotle," the professor says. "Tyranny is the government's absolute control of the state which, according to Aristotle, will lead to corruption by default. A counter argument to this that serves as something of a balm for corruption in government, is the Rule of Law. That is, the idea that no one, not even those in power, are exempt from the laws."

You takes notes in your sprawling German script. The words "tyranny" and "dictator" and "power" taste like something that reminds you of your mother and suddenly you want to be anywhere but here. Because now you're just repeating those words again _even you deserve better_.

"Plato stressed moderation in both power and freedom…"

Nope, you're not paying attention. You haul yourself out of the lecture hall early and don't really bother to care if the professor saw or not. Most of the staff were in your mother's pocket anyway. They know who you are. They know what you are. And they let you be.

You take to the roof of the dorm building because you just want to be somewhere where no one knows who you are, no one looks at you, and no one talks to you.

\----

You really don't want to admit you're excited when she asks you out. But it shows in how much time you take to get ready and you want to throw up a little and punch yourself in the face because goddammit you are over three centuries old getting worked up over a teenager and you're a countess to top it. Get it together Karnstein.

You only whip out the corset when you really, really are facing a challenge when it comes to the girls. Or, in such cases as this, when you really, really are interested purely for the fun of it. And it helps that you sleeping with your roommate effectively ruins mommy dearest's plans. And it gets you laid. Drinks all around.

You sort your way through the throng of drunk, hormone-driven college students in the hall and you try not to gag. They all reek of lust, it's intoxicating in a way that makes you think of gasmasks.

You manage to get the champaign and glasses back to your room though and you can't help it that she looks a little ridiculous.

"Well don't you look like a virgin sacrifice?"

Ha. You're funny.

"I'm not the one in the corset—which, wow."

First point for the home team.

You wonder if she dressed that way on purpose, maybe she actually does know what she's doing and uses the whole Virgin Mary look to her advantage. Then again, this level of innocence cannot be faked by someone who knows what the other side looks like.

"I thought I'd bring the party here," you say. You've always been smooth with lines, not necessarily because they're smart comebacks but because you know girls go crazy for your voice when you lower it to just the right octave and drawl out your vowels.

The effect it has on Laura is not evident on her face but you can hear her heartrate and the speed of her lungs. And especially the friction as she does her best to manually slow both down and it's like nails on glass because that never, ever works. Humans are strange.

"The party being dancing in the hallway and ludicrously expensive Champaign—where did you even get that?"

"I have my methods."

Normally those methods involve you glaring down the store clerk or even taking a bite. This time you actually paid for it though. You're still not sure why.

You pull the usual moves on her, invade her space, touch her, make it either impossible for her to meet your eyes or impossible to look away. Both can be used to your advantage. And you do use them. Until it turns out the little sunflower had very, very different plans from yours.

And suddenly you've got foreign hands on you and instincts kick in right along with several triggers and you get a hard hit on William's clavicle and it's so, so satisfying to hear the little twerp actually yelp even if you know it'll be healed in a few hours. You knock one of the gingers into a table corner and manage to get a black eye on the Giving Tree.

They don't give up though.

And while you're tied up and duct taped and are forced to sport a necklace of garlic you think you've certainly had better dates.

\----

By day three you see opportunity. She's adamant about not feeding you until you talk and you decide that works perfectly fine for you.

"Come on, just give me something," she says, staring you down from her bed.

You don't say a thing.

"Look, we know you're protecting people because obviously there's more than one of you at this, so just give me like a number and I'll give a sip."

You roll your eyes. Sure. Okay.

"Which one is your real name?"

She turn your eyes to glare at her and her face does the scrunchy thing and she's strangling something in the air in front of her and groaning.

Oh, yes, you see opportunity. You've tried a few ways of ending it all. There's been jumping and stabbing and shooting and poison. You now get chance number seven to see if starving works. You hope it does, because you're bored and you're tired and you're sad and you're exhausted and you're so old.

In the true dead of the night you think of how far you've walked and how much farther you've run. You think of all the words you've spoken and all books you've read and all the faces you've seen. You think of all the knowledge you gained and the things you lost that mother would never understand.

What would it be like to rest at last?

You give it a go.

But your body betrays you too early and the little wannabe chosen one is oh so nobly pouring the blood down your throat.

"Dammit."

You live to hate another day.

\----

You hadn't meant to be so audacious about protecting her. But you really wanted to smack Will's face right off his head.

And you kind of like having her around.

But after it's all done you also kind of wish you had punched her instead.

\----

Watching the death of the great forbidden TA romance gives you way too much pleasure. At least at first. It's a great show and you're slightly personally invested in never having to see Leaning Tower of Ginger again. Or hear her talk. Or listen to her breath. Or watch her think she's the smartest person in a room.

"You have to call me before you—"

" _Have_ to call you? 'Cuz it's like your job to keep me safe?"

"Yes!"

Whoa. 

" _What?_ "

"I care about you! Of course it's my job to keep you safe."

Even you want to give Xena a knock for that one. But you sit still because both of them seem to have forgotten you're there and Laura's already on her feet and you really want to see if there's going to be a repeat krav maga incident. But instead she's ripping the red head a new one and suddenly you're feeling a, teeny, tiny bit proud. Because she's small, and probably breakable, but she certainly knows how to take up a room.

You don't smile, and not because you're certain the Amazon would deck you, but because this feels a little too important for smiles. Because this is you learning how to handle Laura, learning how to really hear what Laura has to say, this is you seeing her truly angry for the first time. And you catalogue it all because, unlike Danny, you're going to remember it all.

"Laura's too dumb to know what she can and can't handle and needs to be protected by the big strong grownups. That's all anyone ever wants to say to me, my dad, the zetas, you." She turns her head in your direction but doesn't look at you. "Everyone."

You think that you didn't go as far as barging into rooms and demanding phone calls, but perhaps the taking the clandestine route to protecting Laura without telling her what was going on could rub off in an unfortunate way. You also think this might be her way of preemptively telling you to back off in the future.

Fat chance.

\----

The mushroom incident was more annoying than anything else but you weren't about to let her get herself killed (especially not in such an embarrassing way). And you keep in mind everything you just heard from her tongue lashing to the TA and stay a minimum of ten feet away from her. You watched her hack away at mushrooms twice her size and didn't let anyone see you smile (you're fairly certain).

You occasionally kicked a toadstool or two out of the way and earned more than a few glares from her and her friends while they sweat over fair more formidable monstrosities. You shrugged and laughed when they groaned.

Then came the mushroom that shall not be named.

It was huge and was coming down fast. You acted on instinct. It was purely out of your control.

You grabbed her. She was right in its downward path the ground and one of the redheads noticed because they yelled for her to move but you were faster (of course you were). You grab hold of her arm and tug. She's out of the way and suddenly all sorts of pressed up against you.

She jumps at the crash behind her but her eyes are attached to yours with hooks it seems.

And you can hear that heartbeat. It's thunder.

"Thanks," she _breathes_ out.

Oh that pulse…

"Watch yourself, creampuff," you say and release her.

You're five feet away within seconds and she still hasn't moved. After a moment she shakes her head and returns to chopping at the closest mushroom to odd looks from both redheads.

You take a walk. Away from snickers of her friends, away from the exact pitch of her heartbeat, away from the _heat_ pooling out of her human pours, in her human skin, in her human body that was almost crunched like a gingerbread house.

You do two laps before you hear them, before you see them.

"Carmilla!" she calls.

You turn without thinking.

Goddammit.

She's no worse for wear than when you left her and she trots up to you with a smile. Apparently you two do that now, smile at each other. About each other. 12 hours ago she had you tied to a chair. 12 hours ago you wanted to die.

"We're heading back," she says

"So?" you shrug.

"Well I figured you'd want to walk back with us," she says

"'Figured' is where you should have stopped," you say

You aren't overly interested in being around her but you also like the way the air around her body sings. And the sun has a funny way of turning her skin and hair and eyes to gold.

"I mean, you can do whatever, I just thought—I mean, we were…"

"Oh, we're friends now?"

"You saved me from a broken neck, that's friend level stuff in my book."

You roll your eyes and start walking back to the room. She follows immediately and you convince yourself you're going back to the room and she just happened to be chasing after you. You're not going back with her or for her. The ginger twins are not far behind, chatting away about something you don't bother to focus on and you're glad they're here.

The seduction ship may have sailed but the sexual tension hadn't.

And the little ball of sunshine doesn't seem to notice it, standing a foot from you. She probably doesn't even know she's radiating it too. Perhaps she's confused it for something else or decided it's nothing at all in her naïve virginal mind, but you can feel it.

"You know, this means you get to be an active participant in the updates," she says.

"Oh joy."

The pair behind start talking in much lower tones but you catch ever word. They're talking about you. And talking about her. And talking about the two of you. There's no two of you. You will not let there be a two of you. You played this game before and lost terribly. Not that she was anything compared to Ell.

Not yet anyway.

\----

In the library you actually end up diving in front of her to block a particularly murderous book. And her hands grab onto your shoulders tightly, peeking around you from her would-be death and you feel every finger on your skin like the business end of a candle.

"Is this a habit for you?" you say.

"Is it for you?"

Was she actually picking now, when a copy of _The Iliad_ is coming at your head, to flirt? You turn to catch her eye and she's smiling.

For fucks sake.

\----

"Have you ever tried sleeping at night?"

"A few times. Between the years of 1680 and 1698."

Laura rolls her eyes and gets out of bed. Another nightmare popped her up and off her pillow and you watched her collect herself from your perch on the windowsill. You didn't try and comfort her because you're still putting up the last of your fight. You're losing though.

"'What hath night to do with sleep?'" you say.

"Huh?"

"Honestly cupcake, if you're going to write a paper on _Paradise Lost_ at least pay attention to it," you say, hopping off the sill and walking over to your bed. You drop onto the mattress and watch from behind as she furiously types on her laptop.

"You've probably had to sleep at night at some point though," she says, swinging her chair around to face you. "I mean, at the very least for like undercover stuff so you'd look…"

She trails off and pales.

"So I'd look human? You can say it, it's been three centuries years. I'm not exactly sensitive," you say.

But she tilts her head and raises an eyebrow and purses her lips and tells you in exactly no words that she doesn't believe you. She's very good at that, seeing through you. You are a corpse though, fairly transparent and falling apart at the seams. (And all for her).

"'Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is…'" you begin.

When you pause and look up you see her staring at you, at attention now and less at judging.

"'And saw Virtue in her shape how lovely…'"

And then you look right at her, right into her. And she's staring right back. Your bare feet and fingertips are touching through two pairs of brown eyes.

"'And pined his loss.'"

Your voice cracks. Goddammit.

And her eyes are glassy.

Goddammit.

\----

You totally heard her.

_Worst. Crush. Ever._

You don't say anything. But you do smile.

\----

Watching your mother play puppet with Laura's body makes you nauseous. She touches you and Laura's skin burns yours.

"And you, my glittering girl, are a diamond. Stone cannot love flesh."

She told you this before. But it never felt like that. Laura made you feel like flesh again. She reminded your stomach that it could become weightless with butterflies. She made your heart _want_ to beat again so it could race and so it could play in rhythm with hers.

You want to lay into her, but it's hard to get mad when she's wearing Laura's face and using her body as a human shield.

"So what'll be? Do we take the prom king here and leave you and the little moppet alone?"

Do you want to be tied to a brick or a chest full rocks? Both will sink you. Laura dies right before your eyes or you betray her. Poison or knife? Pyre or noose? You push all emotion away, you shove it down and box it up and kick it into the sea. You lock up and become that stone your mother knows you're oh so capable of being. It's about survival. Your survival. And Laura is one of your appendages now. You need her too.

"Deal."

Then your mother grants you the gift of Laura in your arms again.

You swallow your guilt. You can throw it up later.

\----

You spend your time in exile on that roof. You watch the end of the day and think of how this is the last day that ever mattered, it was the last day you felt sunlight. The apocalypse just happened in your room and the world of you and Laura is over now.

It's you and stars again. Your only friends. And even they weren't on your side tonight as they hid behind clouds from what you did and what you lost.

_We're done…_

You weren't even dating, you hadn't even kissed and she was breaking up with you. In another light that might send a flutter in your stomach, knowing that she knew too, that she felt it too. But all it tasted like now was almost and tripping at the finish line.

"You can never be less than you are, Mircalla," your mother said on the day she stole Ell.

You were exactly who you were, and who you've always been. The problem was it was far less than Laura. She was a mountain. You were a desert. Whatever she thought you were becoming, whatever road to redemption she thought you were climbing was all her. The moon only glows when the sunlight hits it.

And now the sun stopped chasing the moon. It banished it instead.

You chase the night breeze back to your room, with every intention of getting your things and vanishing before you have to watch her run back to her ginger knight in shining armor. But the door's wide open and no one's inside. The bag of stakes is gone and the camera is still recording. They'd left in a hurry, wherever they went.

You hit play, against all common sense.

"And Carmilla, if you're watching this, then… _you know_."

And you do. You know it all. You know what she looks like when she sleeps, the exact shade of brown her eyes turn when excited, what makes her laugh, what she looks like in the infinite seconds between controlled and tears. You know her favorite TV show and favorite book. You know that she's angry at you, and you know that, despite all, she doesn't hate you. You know that she wanted so much for you and that you disappointed her.

You know that you love her.

And you know she's not sure if she loves you back. But she wants you to figure that out for her, maybe.

But you're losing her. You already have. She's gone to challenge your mother and she left hours ago according the video. You don't know where to look for her and you think of all the ways you're going to insert a tracking chip into her shoulder when all this is over. If it's not already over. If _she's_ not already over.

But then Gumby is bursting in and, shocker, accusing you of whatever Laura's doing. But you know how to find her now.

If you're stone after all, then you'll plant yourself between your mother and her. You lost Ell because you ran. But if you're cruel and if you're deformed and if you're forsaken and if you're a monolith in time and all the things your mother tells you are, then you're going to be them. Because they just might save Laura.

You think of her paper.

_Awake, arise, or be forever fallen_

\----

In your head you write Laura a letter as you lay down there. You don't know which way was up and which was down, you aren't sure if you're dead or once again cursed into living in agony because your body needs more than that to go. You see her face dance across your eyes both awake and closed. You focus on her, train on her, you have a telescope to her eyes because you're in so much _pain_.

_Dear Laura…_

Dear, dear, dear, sweet, eternal Laura. You hope she will be. You gave everything you had left, everything your mother hadn't already stolen, everything you hadn't already sold, to keep her walking the Earth.

_If I broke your heart, I'm sorry._

You think about her tears and what your mother did and, most of all, what _you_ did and feel something hot in your ribs. This phantom pain is worse. It's melting your bones and your skin is peeling away and away. The scar it leaves is in the shape of an L you think.

_Please don't cry_

You heard her though. And you imagine you can hear her now, across the campus, perhaps across borders, and across oceans. You'll always hear her crying. And tonight her tears were for you. 

_Love forever and always yours, Carmilla_

There are other things you want to say. You want to tell her you're safe now, and she's safe now. You want to tell her you don't regret it, that a hundred deaths would never be enough if she wasn't safe. You need her safe, you need to know she's safe. You need to know someone will hear her breathing and smell her hair and feel her skin and memorize her laugh and etch her smile into the sky. Even if that someone won't you. Oh to know she existed…

You possessed Ell and hid her away and she obeyed and you loved her.

But Laura forced your lungs to beg for air once again.

You don't know if you love her more and the other less because you don't think love has values like that, but you know that in all those hours beneath the Earth you only pictured _her_ face.

It feels a bit like going to sleep for the first time in 300 years.

Mircalla rests at last.

\----

You're waking up in something that smells like Laura. And it's warm, and there's sunlight, and you feel like you've been dropped off a cliff and then hit by a train all during the worst hangover of your life.

But you're still alive.

I'll be goddamned.

"Well that was a kick."

She's hugging you. More like tackling you and you almost fall of the bed but you catch yourself and even smile because you don't know what else to do. You intended to die, thought you were dead, hoped you gave back every pound of flesh you owed the universe and received every lash locked away in the stocks of Fate's prison. You intended to die, you were supposed to. At the end of everything, the one time you truly wanted desperately to live, you were ready to meet with the Reaper again and repay your debt.

But, maybe that's what counted. Maybe the universe did see some shining shard of gold left in your heart of tar.

It was Laura. It saw the part of your soul that was hers and mistook it for something you grew yourself. But you'll take what you can get. Because it's part of you now, after all.

"Hey."

"Hey."

And down the tension _slams_.

"Are you hurt? It looks like you're hurt. And I'm sorry that I hugged you so much that you're hurt, it's just that you were dead and now you're not and I know that you're probably going through—"

It's nice, to have this sense of normalcy again. To have her babbling because she's nervous and to feel that very teenage sense of rush like you want her to ask you to prom. But you're done chasing her. So you get up and hope she doesn't run.

Because you do, in fact, _know_.

"A lot of stuff with your mom…"

Of course she would find more to talk about.

"It's just that…"

It's quiet time now. She seems to realize that, even if she's nervous, and scared and you can smell it on her and hear her heart trying to break her chest.

You should probably help her.

So you do.

You don't like to admit that you've imagined kissing her. A lot. You know she's probably imagined the same. And it's not fireworks (not even with her tongue slipping past your lips, that one was a surprise) it's more like a puzzle piece pulled into its slot by a magnet. And all the edges are touching just as they should and it's forever glued in place. And the result is a spark from the contact.

You part as the fire begins to burn.

"And I know that you didn't do it all for me…"

Well, you can't ask Laura to be less than she is either. So you smile, because she needs to be quiet, and you kiss her again and you're both smiling and kissing and the fire is happy and light like roasting marshmallows. But then she throws herself in your direction one last time and grips tightly to your hips and that fire must just have turned a few shades darker (and hotter).

But there's time for that later.

"Wow. So you're a giant black cat, huh?"

Worth it. Definitely, undeniably wort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, the songs used in chapter/work titles were:
> 
> Please Don't Say You Love Me -- Gabrielle Alpin (chapter titles)
> 
> A Drop In the Ocean -- Ron Pope (piece title)


End file.
